


Layers

by silversurfer



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silversurfer/pseuds/silversurfer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one really thinks about layers, not in the context of themselves, at least. Tony thinks of himself as relatively simple. Of course, he thinks his tech is pretty simple, and in an elegant way it is, but only after you speak the language. Tony is much the same way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Layers

No one really thinks about layers, not in the context of themselves, at least. Second nature, Tony could tell you Captain America’s grin from Steve Rodger’s smile, regardless of their disagreements, but he finds that Tony thinks of himself as relatively simple. Of course, he thinks his tech is pretty simple, and in an elegant way it is, but only after you speak the language. Tony is much the same way.  
  
The genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist has layers in precisely that order, with his heart and core closest to ‘genius’. The philanthropist is seen on the TV. “Well, you know Stark Industries has always supported the advancement of …” flushed out with grins, and tuxedo-filled benefits, and over-sized checks. Anyone can see that.  
  
Get closer and join the party, stand next to him at a function and have a drink, and you meet the playboy. Well, attractive people do, and the rest just watch from a distance as he smooth-talks his way into an evening you had no plans for. It’s like he barely has to say anything, simply unleashing his charisma and it carries him there. Fall into bed, get up, get dressed, get gone. Pepper Potts brings you your dry-cleaning, and dismissed. It’s a rather well-oiled, if repulsive, machine, the doctor thinks. He’d given into brief and torrid affairs before, foreign countries, recalling the gorgeous Brazilian man about a decade younger than him (that had lasted three weeks, before he left the country), but never ended them so coldly, in routine.  
  
Then actually get close to him. Try to be his friend. Bruce had run up against this immediately, because Tony doesn’t have friends. His best friend became that because of systems, because he and the military were in bed together, cutting each other’s paychecks, as Tony puts it, and Rhodey helped secure that. Pepper Potts had a paycheck literally cut by him. Obadiah had inherited him, and then tried to kill him. So, when he began to get closer to Coulson, he offered jets to Portland, “Keep love alive!” with his cellist, and Pepper bought herself birthday presents because enlarged novelty bunnies weren’t her thing, and Dr. Banner himself got a lab and an offer of payroll he turned down. Everybody got a room. Money was thrown liberally, at all of them, because Tony didn’t know how to just be a friend. No point confronting him, though, as it runs deep; “if you’ve got it, flaunt it, right?” he’d bite back with a grin.  
  
It’s easier, because then there’s an excuse. He doesn’t have to consider friendship, everyone is his whore. He can pay for their company. Like everything else, Tony doesn’t see it as a layer. He sees it as easier.  
  
It’s reinforced when Pepper leaves, and Tony, drunk off his ass on the couch in his workshop, laughs bitterly, “I never should’ve taken her off payroll. Can’t keep a woman that cuts her own checks.” Bruce nods, and keeps fiddling, even if he knows that’s not the extent of the story. (He’s heard enough about her leaving in the night when Tony has nightmares, making him get rid of his security-blanket suits, and yelling at him after he’s barely made it out alive. Great secretary, awful friend. Yes, the man’s infuriating, but Pepper was a bitch anyway, something he only respected to a point. The suits came back.)  
  
The genius is Banner’s favorite so far, a level he has yet to get past. Everyone knows it’s there, so it’s not to say he’s special, but Banner’s the only one actively invited to engage in it. It makes him think of this as his Tony, even though he knows he has no right to. No, Grease Monkey Tony is Tony’s Tony, that’s officially Hardware Stage, but Collared-Shirt and Screen-Waving Tony is Banner’s. He steps back, one arm folded, the other touching his face, staring down equations and saying, “Banner, I need your help here.” It’s so easy. Solving conundrums until Tony pushes back from his desk, rolling on a stool with raised hands and saying “Boo-ya!” or jumping up to go call over some other hologram with the epiphany “Fuck, damnit, that’s perfect! That’s it!”, or sometimes, just sometimes, collapsing forward on his desk, head in his hands laughing because “Damnit, Bruce, how do you do that? I should have seen it. God, idiot, idiot, idiot.” Sometimes, they give up, but usually they move on, they make something better, and work, and work, and look up and would you look at the time, is it really 4am? Tony has no real clocks in his lab, he’s “thrown off the shackles of time” but he has windows, and Bruce has a watch he meticulously ignores.  
  
Bruce is not sure what to call the layer beneath that. He’s seen glimpses, and all he knows is it’s coffee-drinking, pizza-ordering, sleep-rumpled and nightmare-riddled. He doesn’t say PTSD, because Tony’s sensitive even if everyone else on this team has it, too, but he does say ‘trauma’ once and the mechanic just reaches up to stroke the spot on his chest where his arc reactor isn’t. “Metal in there, still, though. They needed something to fix my ribs up with. I’ll always be the metal man, man in a can.” Banner sighs, finishes his coffee, and retires to his room, promising to quit thinking for the night, especially about renegade tin-can men and their onion layers.


End file.
